From a cookie cutter opening kill to a bland protagonist to a lack of respect for the fanbase, the pilot for the new Scream TV series makes all the classic mistakes of mediocre slasher remakes. The fact that it seems to be at least somewhat aware of these mistakes does not redeem it from being just plain uninteresting.
4/10
Spoilers to follow:
The original Scream was unique and subversive. It deconstructed and reinvigorated the tired Slasher genre while still paying respect to said genre and its fans. The pilot for the new Scream TV series does none of these things.
The opening in the original Scream worked so well because no one expected Drew Barrymore to die. If naive, sweet Drew Barrymore can die, then no one is safe. While watching the opening scene of the Pilot, if you expect the mean, promiscuous blonde to die in under 5 minutes, congratulations, you’re right. Obviously the Pilot can’t do another Drew Barrymore scene, because it’s already been done. But it could have at least tried to do something original. Maybe have the girl survive the opening scene. That may not have established the same sense of dread, but at least it would have been unexpected.
The next problem is the bland protagonist. The nice every-girl protagonist has been a trope of the Slasher genre since Laurie Strode took her first babysitting gig. The original Scream did a great job of subverting this trope by giving us Sidney Campbell. A spunky (non-blonde) teen who isn’t afraid to punch reporters in the face or talk back to the killer. She was so different from any slasher protagonist we’d seen before, it was hard not to like her.
Now, I love Sidney, Dewey and Gale and would definitely watch a show about them. But clearly, that’s not gonna happen. Since we can’t have another Sidney Campbell, the Pilot needs to give us someone who is equally interesting and likable in her own way.
It almost does this with the (Non)Lesbian-Camera-Girl (sorry, I didn't bother remembering names). In the very first scene, we already sympathize with her because she's a victim of cyber-bullying and an oppressed minority. She scores even more points when (contrary to what we’d expect) she stays tough and doesn't let the cyber-bullying bother her. Unlike all the other characters, she doesn’t fit into any stereotype. She kisses girls, but insists she’s not a lesbian. She’s a nerd, but she’s also very tough. All around, she’s hard to predict and by far the most interesting character in the show. A worthy successor to Sidney Campbell.
Unfortunately, she’s not the protagonist. No, the protagonist is a sweet, blonde every-girl with only slightly more personality than a doormat. I really hoped she would turn out to be the new Drew Barrymore. I hoped they would kill her at the end of the episode to subvert our expectations, but no such luck. While she may still die later in the series, the Pilot already failed to capture my interest, so it doesn’t really matter what they do after this point.
My last point is the lack of respect for the fans. The show could have tried harder to capture the Scream fanbase, the people most likely to watch the show. If the Pilot had even hinted at an underlying connection to the Westboro murders of the films, I might have been tempted to keep watching. But instead it creates a "new" generic slasher backstory, giving the finger to any fans who might have invested their time in this series.
Ironically enough, the Pilot itself tells the audience the problem with the series. At the end, Jamie Kennedy Jr says, “you have to care about the characters and their side-plots in order to keep watching.” Unfortunately, we really don’t care.
4/10
A random sidenote about the new Ghostface. The Pilot seems to follow the same recipe as the Nightmare on Elm Street remake: Take 1 iconic horror villain (like Freddy or Ghostface). Put him in the microwave for 5 minutes. Take him out and smear his face around. Repeat as necessary until all visually striking aspects of his appearance have melted away into an uninteresting blob.
